Booting from a Sun tape drive on a SPARCstation 1

[mike at shogun.us.cc.umich.edu]

As I mentioned in a previous article, I'm trying to load SunOS 4.0.3 on a
new SPARCstation 1.  We have a Sun tape drive and an external Maxtor
drive.  I've cabled the system like this:

Sun -> tape -> drive (terminated internally)
       SCSI 4  SCSI 1

I had some problems finding the drive when it was at SCSI 0 but now that
it's set at SCSI 1, scsi-probe in the monitor can find it.  Then I try to
boot from the tape.  At the old monitor I type

bst()

The tape drive makes some noise and then I get:

Booting from st(0,0,0)
Can't rewind tape
Can't open boot device...

If I try again, I get:

Booting from st(0,0,0)
Can't read boot blocks.
 Boot load failed

Does this sound like a bad tape or perhaps like I'm having SCSI problems?
Any help, especially by mail, would be appreciated.

mike_nowak at um.cc.umich.edu